“The education of women is a powerful immune system to injustice,” author and peace activist Alexandra Fuller told the assembled students and staff at Emma Willard School’s first Serving and Shaping Her World discussion of the year on October 11, 2012.
Fuller’s talk coincided with the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl and marked an opportunity for the entire campus to discuss “the importance of speaking out as women, as minorities, as peace activists, and as consumers for an imaginative, creative way forward”.
Fuller is the author of multiple books including The Legend of Colton H. Bryant and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. Her talk, “No Whispering Allowed: The Only Taboo is Silence” focused on the ways in which her upbringing as a white girl in southern African apartheid changed her views on the world, power, and how to change the current dynamics.
“I understood one thing clearly–that if I did not get educated...that not only would I have no voice, but that I would not have a choice,” she said. “There is no independence. We are all interdependent. We are of one planet.”
The Serving and Shaping Her World Speakers Series is an annual Emma Willard School series that addresses issues from global, women’s, artistic, ethical, health, and scientific perspectives. The next speaker in the series will be social activist and urban designer Candy Chang on November 6 and 7, 2012.
